Green Day is the first headliner announced for the 2012 Voodoo Fest, aka the Voodoo Experience, in New Orleans. The band will perform in City Park over the weekend of Oct. 26-28, shortly after the release of a new CD called !Uno!," the first of a planned trilogy. It is Green Day's only announced North American performance for 2012 so far. The band broke the news on its website late Monday evening.

Danny Bourque / Times-Picayune archiveGreen Day, seen here onstage at the New Orleans Arena in 2009, will return to the Voodoo Fest in 2012.

Green Day’s set during the 2004 Voodoo, the first date on the American leg of the “American Idiot” tour, ranked among the strongest in the history of the festival. The band’s most recent local performance was in August 2009 at the New Orleans Arena during the tour for the “21st Century Breakdown” album.

Founded in 1999, the Voodoo Experience is produced by Rehage Entertainment.

Tickets for the 2012 festival are available at thevoodooexperience.com. Monday, May 14 is apparently the last day to buy three-day passes for $125, and three-day Loa Lounge VIP passes for $250. Starting on Tuesday, May 15, a three-day general admission pass is $175 and the Loa VIP pass goes up to $500.

Green Day's return is the Voodoo equivalent of Bruce Springsteen's return to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival presented by Shell this year. Here is my review of Green Day at the ’04 Voodoo:

The Beastie Boys and Green Day flip-flopped their Saturday sets, so that the Beasties would perform last. Voodoo producer Stephen Rehage said he learned early last week that the two bands had decided themselves to swap positions. The reason? Respect. The members of Green Day reportedly felt that the veteran Beastie Boys deserved the headlining slot.

If the Beastie Boys caught Green Day’s show, they likely didn’t relish the prospect of following it. If there was a better, more unrepentantly entertaining set at Voodoo, I didn’t see it.

Green Day is growing up. The band’s new "American Idiot" CD is a leap forward in structure and lyrical content, still delivered with the band’s usual hooks and panache. At Voodoo, the first stop on the "American Idiot" tour, guitarist/vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool donned red and black, matching the album’s cover art color scheme. For the first three songs of the set, all drawn from "American Idiot, " an auxiliary guitarist, percussionist and keyboardist augmented the core trio.

Then they jettisoned the extras, stripped down to the original three and uncorked "Longview" and "Geek Stink Breath, " the kind of power punk pop that first elevated Green Day from clubs to arenas. Armstrong sawed away on robust power chords as Dirnt’s potent elastic bass lines and Cool’s propulsive drums pushed him.

Armstrong, especially, is still in touch with his inner adolescent. He hosed down the audience with Super Soakers, reached a hand deep down into his pants, cussed and upraised a middle finger to emphasize that he "won’t be part of the redneck agenda."

And he built a new band with three amateur musicians pulled from the audience. Telling a white lie, Armstrong proclaimed he was staging the stunt "for the first time ever in New Orleans." He wasn’t: He did the same thing at the UNO Lakefront Arena in 1999.

Regardless, it was a hoot. Armstrong, Cool and Dirnt gave their respective young substitutes quick primers in the ABC’s of punk rock. "All you need to know is three notes and you’ll be in Sonic Youth, " Armstrong cracked.

Then the fledgling "band" took flight, however wobbly, with the Green Day horn section providing support. The substitute guitarist earned a free guitar, the bassist got a stage dive and the drummer walked off with nothing but a tale to tell.

With instruments back in the hands of professionals, Green Day walloped "Basket Case, " Armstrong’s chronicle of cracking up. More surprises were to come. The ska-style horns of "King For a Day" morphed, improbably enough, into the "Animal House" anthem "Shout!" As Armstrong dropped to his knees, a roadie draped a cape around his shoulders, in classic soul singer fashion. Whether he meant the gesture as tribute or farce was immaterial. In such an unexpected setting, it worked as either.

So, too, did a faithful rendition of Queen’s "We Are the Champions." Punk was first intended as an irreverent response to such overblown arena rock, but Armstrong and company refuse to dismiss classic rock entirely; they even covered The Who’s "My Generation" on the 1992 indie album "Kerplunk."

At Voodoo, Armstrong teased out riffs from Ozzy Osbourne’s "Crazy Train" and Led Zeppelin’s "Stairway to Heaven, " which he quickly cut off with his own rousing "Brain Stew." But Queen’s stadium anthem got the full-on treatment, with guitar solo, keyboards, mallets on cymbals and flickering lighters in the audience. Armstrong updated the song’s "you’ve given me fame and fortune" lyric with Dave Chappelle’s "I’m Rick James, bitch!" catch phrase.

Perhaps needing to reaffirm his band’s punk rock cred, Dirnt burned and smashed his bass at the conclusion of "We Are Champions." Left alone, Armstrong accompanied himself on electric guitar for "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), " the ballad that first hinted at his maturing ambitions. He, Dirnt and Cool are living up to those ambitions, and more.